The present invention relates to data processing and data management, and in particular, to a system and method for automated management and verification of invoices and data associated with invoices.
When two entities engage in a business transaction, an invoice is typically generated to capture and memorialize important information about the transaction. For example, an invoice commonly includes a list of goods delivered or services performed, with corresponding prices, quantities, descriptions and charges. As a company grows, keeping track of invoices from suppliers of goods or services (i.e., vendors) can quickly become a difficult task. Different departments within a company may use hundreds or even thousands of different vendors. Furthermore, vendors may send their invoices to different people across the company. Many companies typically have internal or external departments for receiving and processing invoices, but the employees in such departments may have very little information about the nature of the transaction leading to the invoice. Thus, tracking and promptly paying valid invoices, and detecting and correcting erroneous or fraudulent invoices, is a major problem facing today's business community.
To manage and track the flow of invoices, companies often require vendors to associate additional information with each invoice such as a purchase order number, information about which business unit in the company ordered the goods or services, and various tracking and/or reference numbers. Additionally, vendors typically include their name, address and various reference and tracking numbers of their own on their invoices. However, one problem that arises is that the information provided on different invoices can vary drastically from vendor to vendor. Moreover, even if the same information is provided across all vendors, the “format” of the information may be different. For example, the format of the invoice document itself may “look” different because different information is presented in different physical portions of each invoice. As another example, a vendor based in the United States may bill in U.S. Dollars while a vendor based in Germany may bill in Euros. Other problems commonly associated with invoice processing include processing multiple invoices sent by the same vendor for the same job or processing invoices with missing or invalid information, to name just a few. As the size of an organization grows, processing invoices with these and other problems can become economically burdensome because of the increased difficulty for accurate and efficient human processing of invoices.
FIG. 1 is an example of one common approach to automated invoice processing. Typical invoice processing is user-centric, often starting with a user entering data from a vendor's paper invoice 101 into a computer software invoice system 102. Data associated with or relating to an invoice that is stored or processed electronically is referred to herein as “invoice data” (e.g., structured or unstructured data or other electronic information). Once the user has entered invoice data into the system, the program may cross reference a purchase order number against an expected purchase order number. If the purchase order on the incoming invoice does not match exactly with an existing purchase order, the system may indicate that an erroneous invoice has been received. Erroneous invoices are referred to as “exceptions,” and typically initiate a manual exception handling process 103. The manual exception handling process may require a company employee to call the vendor at 104 to determine which purchase order corresponds to the particular invoice. Alternatively, the manual exception handling process may require a user to acquire signature authorizations at 105 if, for example, no purchase order was ever assigned to the goods or services received from the vendor.
However, existing user-centric invoice management systems are expensive and highly susceptible to errors. As the number of invoices processed by a company grows, the necessary human interaction may require hundreds or even thousands of employees to manually enter paper invoices and handle exceptions and further processing. Additionally, because human invoice processors are often far removed from direct interaction with the vendor, such individuals are more likely to make a number of different mistakes including overlooking invalid or erroneous invoice data, paying out the same invoice two or more times (i.e., paying on duplicates) or paying out the wrong amount, to name just a few. These and other mistakes and inefficiencies in processing invoices can become very expensive as a company grows.
Thus, there is a need for a system that can process invoices in a way that will improve the efficiency, speed and accuracy of invoice processing over existing techniques. The present invention solves these and other problems by providing an invoice processing system and method for automated management and verification of invoices and the data associated with the invoices.